Marines died as they lived, protectors

Navy Cross ceremony honors fallen SpecOps teammates

Two Marines awarded posthumous Navy Crosses and their teammate who died with them in Afghanistan were remembered Saturday for the protect-and-serve ethos for which they gave their lives.

The nation’s second-highest medal for valor in combat was presented to the families of Capt. Matthew Manoukian and Staff Sgt. Sky Mote during a ceremony at the Camp Pendleton headquarters for the 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion.

They were killed Aug. 10, 2012, by a rogue Afghan policeman who opened fire inside their military outpost in the Puzeh area of Sangin.

Both rushed the attacker and shot back, fighting to the death to cover other Marines who escaped with the wounded.

Mote, 27, of El Dorado, was an explosive ordnance disposal technician. Manoukian, 29, from Los Altos Hills, was team commander.

Gunnery Sgt. Ryan Jeschke, the team chief, was shot in the back as he led the policeman out of the operations center.

“In a day and an age when the word ‘hero’ is applied to many who have simply done their duty, today is different,” the battalion chaplain said in the invocation. “Today we gather to honor two men whose remarkable bravery conquered fear. Men whose boldness prevailed against the common man’s temptation to run away.

“These men did not run. Men whose selfless, courageous acts against evil saved lives, at the cost of their own. Now that, Father, is heroism.”

Marines help unfurl a large American flag as it is raised before the start of the Presentation of the Navy Cross ceremony, posthumously, for Captain Matthew Manoukian and Staff Sgt. Sky Mote.
— Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

A pair of Marines secure the end of a large American flag after it was raised before the start of the Presentation of the Navy Cross ceremony, posthumously, for Captain Matthew Manoukian and Staff Sgt. Sky Mote.
— Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

Marine Sgt. Major James Willeford stands in between pictures of Captain Matthew Manoukian, right, and Staff Sgt. Sky Mote before the Presentation of the Navy Cross ceremony, posthumously, for the two Marines killed in Afghanistan.
— Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

Cynthia Minshall, mother of Staff Sgt. Sky Mote, is hugged by Major Gen. Mark Clark after accepting the Navy Cross award for her son during a Presentation of the Navy Cross ceremony for Mote and Captain Matthew Manoukian.
— Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego

Team 8133 reunited for the ceremony, which became another memorial to the fallen where strong men who had not cried in a long while found themselves in tears.

Garrett, a special amphibious reconnaissance corpsman on the team who helped care for his mortally wounded brothers-in-combat, said “they wouldn’t want this, they would want us to be having fun. We still joke around in their memory to this day.” (Active Marine special operations forces are not fully identified.)

Maj. Gen. Mark Clark, commanding general of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, said the way the three men died was the culmination of their service as Marines.

They deployed to Afghanistan to execute the command’s new village stability operations strategy. The approach is “significantly more complex than traditional warfare,” he said, because it shifts the emphasis from direct combat to building relationships with tribal leaders and Afghan security forces to stabilize an area.

Although it exposes the teams to greater risk, Manoukian, Mote, Jeschke and their fellow Marines demonstrated its success in Puzeh, Clark said.

In a formerly violent area of the upper Sangin river valley, they built the Afghan Local Police into a force that took down the top insurgent leader.

“The bravery of Matt, Ryan and Sky was a continuation of the brave choices they made in the beginning, to choose a harder road fraught with peril, in order to have a chance at victory,” Clark said.

Their heroic selflessness “is an act that cannot be ordered or demanded. It is an act given fully and willingly without regard for themselves. They do it for the mission, and for the love of their fellow teammates.”